Louie, You Miserable F***!

Louie is sweet and sour at the same time – Asain food comes to mind. The show can be gut wrenching funny and the opposite in consecutive moments. Those feelings even coincide at times. The ending of the second season is one of those moments where what is happening is so funny but the implications are at the same time so sad. Like when you see someone fall and get hurt. Really hurt. And that person starts yelling for help, but you can’t stop laughing because she is talking all funny due to the broken teeth and severed carotid artery and the imminent death. And that’s how I feel about Louie.

The show is pretty much the story of Louie, a comedian. His life is told with intermissions of his stand-up that end up being connected to the plot. Yeah, I know, SEINFELD ALERT! It couldn’t be farther from the truth. Louie is the Anti-Seinfeld. There is no group of friends, it’s just him and his two little girls. He has friends, but they don’t stick around much. There are no canned laughs. No clean cut editing. No joke, pun, jest or gag every 30 seconds. It’s just his life in the first person, told straightforwardly and coarsely, but amplified or distorted for comedic purposes. We see his problems as well as… his problems.

Plot-wise, it is a pretty bleak story about a pathetic guy. In it there are intense It had all the right ingredients to make a fairly good drama. In fact there are many dramatic moments. In one episode we see how he was violently inducted into Christianism, in another how he was humiliated out of sure sex by a teenager. But in general, this is a funny show. Really funny. There are moments of pure brilliance: the ridicule of a Dentist Tarese, the oral rapist; the surrealist date, that ends in an escape by helicopter; the appearance of Dr. Ben Nick, AKA Ricky “Troll” Gervais; the three cab drivers who almost kill one another (literally) and many, many others.

F*** the commandments!

It’s the darkest comedy I have seen on TV. It’s unique and probably the best thing to happen to the medium since Arrested Development – all due apologies to Phill and family.

I have seen some, and that ‘chris morris jam’ is dark indeed. I didn’t know it. But its darkness is completely different. Louie is about a truly messed up life, and that resonates with you. There’s really a big chance that you can get depressed watching Louie! And that’s dark.